SDSU practice visitor: Dave Rice

UNLV head coach Dave Rice motions to his players during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game against Arizona State Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2015, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher)

The Associated Press

UNLV head coach Dave Rice motions to his players during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game against Arizona State Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2015, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher)

UNLV head coach Dave Rice motions to his players during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game against Arizona State Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2015, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher) (The Associated Press)

Hard to imagine a college basketball practice Monday with more high-level Division I coaching experience in the building.

You had San Diego State’s Steve Fisher, he of 541 career victories over 25 seasons. You also had Jim Dutcher, the father of associate head coach Brian Dutcher who won 312 Div. I games and a Big Ten championship at Minnesota.

You also had Dave Rice, pushed out at UNLV last month after 4½ seasons. (The Rebels, by the way, are 4-4 since and have lost three straight.)

Rice has spent the past few weeks visiting various coaches and programs, taking in a practice or two, sitting in on a film session, seeing what coaches never get to see: how their counterparts do it. Rice already has gone to New Mexico and Indiana, and he has a trip planned to BYU next week and a few others after that. Monday was his stop at SDSU.

“I’ve been really fortunate that coaches in our profession have reached out and asked me to come in and spend some time watching them,” Rice said. “This is certainly a place I absolutely wanted to come because of the respect I have for Coach Fisher, Coach Dutcher, Coach (Justin) Hutson and their staff.

“I’ve been well aware being on the other sideline of how hard Coach Fisher’s teams play, how disciplined they are, how well they play together. Practice validated all of that. I just was really impressed. You can see where there’s a correlation between successful practices and the successful program that he built. It’s been great for me.”

Fisher spent the year after he was fired at Michigan in 1997 in a similar fashion, visiting friends in the coaching profession and gleaning knowledge from their practices.

“Dave Rice has been a coaching friend since I came out here,” Fisher said. “He’s a quality coach. He got what will happen to most of us in this business. He got let go in a public situation. So did I. So I know how he feels. We reached out and said, ‘I’m sorry. Anything we can do, we’d love to do. If you’d like to come over, we’d love to have you.’

“You try to be the kind of person to someone that you hope someone would be for you in that moment. Sometimes you don’t want to get out and about right away. But if you know that you’re welcome somewhere, that might make you more willing to say: ‘Hey, I’m going to go over there and see what some other people do, how they do it.’”

The call

Fisher declined to discuss the specifics or necessity of the Mountain West’s statement following the 78-71 overtime win against New Mexico, that a judgment call with 12.3 seconds left in regulation incorrectly gave the Aztecs the ball with a chance to force OT. Fisher did, however, defend the man who whistled the inbound violation, Randy McCall, who has worked four Final Fours and in 2014 was named the Naismith Men’s Basketball Official of the Year.

“He’s as good an official as there is,” Fisher said. “As a coach, and I’ve been doing this for 17 years in the Mountain West, I always ask who’s on the game. Anytime they tell me he’s on the game, I feel as if, home or away, you’re going to get a veteran guy who’s not going to be intimidated or influenced. He’s going to do the very best he can.”

Early exit

The Aztecs have tested their fans’ faith several times this season with their penchant for close games and rabbit-out-of-the-hat finishes, none moreso than Saturday afternoon at Viejas Arena. When Elijah Brown made a contested 3-pointer to give New Mexico a 66-61 lead with 22 seconds left in regulation, some fans made a fast break for the parking lot and the student section began passing down their signs to the front.

The game wasn’t lost, nor was the moment on the players.

“We saw that,” Winston Shepard said.

“We for sure saw that,” Jeremy Hemsley said.

Another streak

SDSU has now won 21 straight regular-season conference games in football and men’s basketball, the longest active streak in the nation and one short of the longest over the past two decades. Utah State won 22 straight in 1999-2000 while in the Big West. Iowa recently had a 21-game football/men’s basketball streak ended with a basketball loss at Maryland.

The latest numbers

SDSU received 22 votes in the Associated Press Top 25 poll, its most all season. That effectively put the Aztecs as the fourth team out, or 29thoverall, one spot ahead of Duke and three ahead of Gonzaga. The Aztecs still have not received a vote in the USA Today coaches poll. Their RPI climbed to 44 (it was 100 a month ago), but their ranking in the other major computer metric, Kenpom.com, fell to 65. Kenpom.com’s computer makes predictions for future games; it currently has the Aztecs winning all of its remaining Mountain West games except for a one-point loss at New Mexico on March 1.